Waze to help keep Israel’s wild animals from becoming road kill

Product Specialist for Waze Mark Campos speaking on stage at LocationWorld 2016 Day 2 at The Conrad in New York City, Nov. 3, 2016. (Brian Ach/Getty Images for LocationWorld 2016)

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The navigation app Waze has teamed up with an Israeli NGO to help wild animals from becoming roadkill on Israeli roads.

The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel has launched a campaign that calls on Israeli drivers to use Waze to report wild animals run over by cars in open spaces and outside of urban areas, which is an existing feature of the app.

The reports will be used to map the roads that are most dangerous to wild animals and find ways to reduce the number that are killed.

The project was launched Wednesday, ahead of U.N. World Wildlife Day on Friday.

Among the animals most often hit by cars are gazelles, porcupines, badgers, turtles, hyenas and otters. In January, the Waze community of drivers logged 1,416 roadkill reports.